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snarpThe 2300 AD moment where Marle and Lucca finally admit where they are is really good. That's a scene that wouldn't work as well as it does in any other medium - the closest I can think of is the last line in Rosemary Kirstein's The Outskirter's Secret, which does something very similar. But OS works on an intellectual level, while CT is a master of the hard punch in the stomach.
Video games let us lie to ourselves in a way that other mediums don't, I think because we consider their worlds negotiable, in a way we usually don't with in a book or a movie. Intellectually, when the characters end up in 2300, we know what's happened, but on a certain level we're not obligated to believe it. Because the things that have happened prior to that point have been so gentle and ordinary for a video game - there's a Princess, there's Dark Lord, Dark Lord's got a lair; all the battles are easy - the stark nightmare world of 2300 seems like a mistake, one that could be corrected. Partly because the enemies are harder! One of the rules of RPGs is that if the enemies shoot up in power too quickly, you may have taken a wrong turn. 2300 seems like a wrong turn.
This makes it seem unreal, like something we can switch off to go back to the real game. You're reluctant to save, because you think you might have missed something; and saving is how you know something's true. We see that Lucca and Marle have been in the same state of simultaneously belief and disbelief that the player has; Marle, like the player who hasn't saved yet, says uncertainly, "We can change it, can't we?" Lucca says, "I guess so..." It's just so perfect.
Video games let us lie to ourselves in a way that other mediums don't, I think because we consider their worlds negotiable, in a way we usually don't with in a book or a movie. Intellectually, when the characters end up in 2300, we know what's happened, but on a certain level we're not obligated to believe it. Because the things that have happened prior to that point have been so gentle and ordinary for a video game - there's a Princess, there's Dark Lord, Dark Lord's got a lair; all the battles are easy - the stark nightmare world of 2300 seems like a mistake, one that could be corrected. Partly because the enemies are harder! One of the rules of RPGs is that if the enemies shoot up in power too quickly, you may have taken a wrong turn. 2300 seems like a wrong turn.
This makes it seem unreal, like something we can switch off to go back to the real game. You're reluctant to save, because you think you might have missed something; and saving is how you know something's true. We see that Lucca and Marle have been in the same state of simultaneously belief and disbelief that the player has; Marle, like the player who hasn't saved yet, says uncertainly, "We can change it, can't we?" Lucca says, "I guess so..." It's just so perfect.
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Date: 2010-05-10 02:23 pm (UTC)And I think that's about the point where I got stuck. :p